The cube wasn’t going to help anybody do anything. So — this is the big question — why bother?

“It’s something you do just to see if you can do it,” [Brown] says. “I thought it was an amusing thing to do.”

It occurred to us that this impulse — the simple wish to know what you can accomplish — is at the very root of creativity and innovation. Without that impulse in clever human beings, we wouldn’t have computers or the Hoover Dam or the Sears Tower. And without it we’ll never get the things we need to continue surviving on this torn planet. That impulse can save the world.

The article also includes this charming line — another reason, I think, to take Brown as a role model:

[Brown’s] 5-year-old son, Rush — named after Benjamin Rush, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence — has his own Legos.

“As you can imagine, they are kept separate. Underlined. We do borrow bits from each other, under very controlled, mutual-hostages situations,” Brown says.